Environmental Law Firm Says Wyoming's Fracking Disclosure Regs Fall Short

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

March 23, 2012 | 12:00 PM

Susan Phillips / StateImpactPA

A drill rig in Susquehanna County, Pa.

Wyoming was the first state to require gas drillers to disclose the chemicals used to frack wells. But Earthjustice, an environmental law firm based in New York, says state regulators have approved 50 requests by gas and oil companies not to make certain ingredients public.

To frack a well, a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals are used at high pressure to extract the gas. Wyoming’s law, like Pennsylvania’s requirements, allow companies to withhold information they say are trade secrets, or proprietary. In Pennsylvania, the companies themselves get to decide what is proprietary. But in Wyoming, the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has oversight.

Earthjustice, on behalf of several Wyoming-based environmental groups, will file a petition on Monday seeking court intervention to release the identities of the ingredients that oil and gas companies have withheld. The group says the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission acted illegally by granting exemptions to the state’s disclosure law. For more on Pennsylvania’s disclosure requirements, and how they stack up against other states like Wyoming, click here.